Of Ash and Infernos
by Vivyana
Summary: The Heart of the Night Elves burns. Thysia Silverwing's own life becomes gravely endangered as she seeks out the most important person is her life, with the fire closing in on them. One-shot.


The air was thick with smoke and ash, fires rapidly spreading about on every delicately crafted wooden house and structure, from the Temple Gardens to the Cenarion Enclave. Desperate pleas and cries of the innocent tormented her mind as Thysia (last) rushed through the capital, across the stone paths and over the bridge to the Temple of the Moon. They would be safe there, and her daughter would be there, safely sheltered from the pressing fires. She shifted out of her nightsaber form and rushed inside.

When the Horde first had set Ruth'eran Village ablaze with their siege machines, Thysia had taken a hippogryph up to the tree as ordered by Tyrande, who had brought the gravely wounded Malfurion back to Stormwind. From atop the beast, she could do only but watch as the flames consumed the docks, the wooden houses and structures, the air thick with a horrifying stench of death and burnt flesh. The night elves not consumed by the inferno had fallen in the icy water below. 

Dolanaar, Starbreeze Village, everything would be rapidly consumed by the flames that licked across the branches of the World Tree. She had urged the hippogryph to go faster, the beast beating its wings frantically against the air in an attempt to make haste, and the winds whipped across her face, her silvery hair in disarray and clothes filled with ash. Smoke stung in her eyes and made them tear, but it wouldn't be the smoke only.

The heart of the night elves was on fire. When she had entered the city, the fires had already gripped around them and she leaped off the mount, shifted midair into a saber and landed swiftly. The boughs bending over the temple had caught fire too as she rushed on, a frantic panic building up in her veins with every step she took. 

Inside, the Temple was absolutely packed with night elves. Priestesses worked tirelessly to heal the grievously wounded while at the same time direction whole families to the portals held open by magi. Thysia watched and saw men, women and children with terrible burns, coughing their lungs out or covered in soot. Some had ignored the priestesses, instead jumped in the Moonwell in an attempt to dose their pain off. A woman she did not recognize screamed on top of her lungs to the horrified crowd to stay calm and move to the portals.

It didn't help.

She frantically scanned the crowd for a sign, anything of her daughter. Her dear Alithea had to be here, safe from the fires and not wandering around on the cities' outskirts like she used to do when-

Her heart stocked.

She wasn't here.

"Alithea! _Alithea!" _she screamed, eyes darting about for her. Nothing.

Fury surged in her veins as the night elf turned and left the temple, pushing her way through the frantic crowd as more and more citizens poured in. She shifted back in her nightsaber form and ran back across the steps, over the bridges as the heated stone under her feet seared her, burnt in her flesh. As she ran through the Temple Gardens towards the Warrior's Terrace, all stood ablaze in a crimson-orange inferno. The branches at the entrance were completely engulfed, sparks rained down on her fur as she sped past them, solely focused on the most important thing in her world. 

When she stepped foot outside the smoke was so dense she couldn't see further than half a mile. It choked her, closed in on her, filled her lungs with a burning sensation as she gasped for fresh air that wasn't there. Thysia frantically searched as far she could see… until a prickling sensation made her fur stand upright.

She waited…. Waited…

And then turned and struck with her sharp claws, slicing at the ambusher above her. The knife drove deep in her shoulder blade and she cried out in agony as blood gushed out of the wound. With a dull thud, the Forsaken fell to the ground in a lifeless heap as her claws had ripped out half his face and throat. The pain didn't matter, but she roared nevertheless in frustration and desperation.

Then her ears picked up a small sound, small enough to go unnoticed by any other elf, but recognizable enough to her. She sprinted across the forest floor towards it, leaping out of the way for falling branches and took down another rogue, who'd foolishly turned her back to the night elf for just a moment. 

_Please, Elune, let her be alive. _

The sound came from her right and she took a sharp turn, skidding across the forest floor and her tail swept behind her. Her lungs burned from smoke and exhaustion, heart slammed against her chest, the blood pounded in her ears and from the wound on her shoulder. 

Underneath some untouched purple bushes, the white hair stood out against pale purplish skin littered with bruises. She shifted back and sank to her knees, reached out to her daughter who had crawled underneath the leaves and now crawled from out of hiding. When she embraced the little elf, nothing else mattered for a moment, not the burning around them, the inferno's blazing or the cracking of the trees as the fires continued to be launched into the tree.

She held her daughter close, so young and already scarred by the cruel world. Their peace was shortlived, however, as another surge of fire came barreling across the leaves and she ducked low as the impact shattered great branches and lit them up.

"Come, we have to go," she urged and put her daughter to the ground before shifting in the form of a great deer. There was no more time. The small night elf climbed on her back and held onto the collar as Thysia ran again, faster and faster as the fires closed in on them, back through the entrance, narrowly jumping across fallen rubble of the destroyed structures.

The world passed in a blur. By the time she reached the Temple of the Moon again the flames licked away at the roof.

A horrible groaning came from overhead and slammed into the glass dome on top of the temple, shattering the glass and then slammed into the great statue of Haidene. The elves at the portals paused ever so slightly and screams erupted as the bowl of everflowing water didn't hold and the great tree limb came crashing down, painting the water of the Moonwell red as it cracked and spilled across the temple's floor. Horrific screams and cries came as multiple citizens were crushed by the dying wood.

The remainder of the frantic stampede hurried outside, right into their fiery deaths as there was no way out anymore. The flames would kill them, lick the flesh from their bones. The smoke would suffocate them if they didn't move. She clung to her daughter, who wept heartbreakingly against her chest and she could do nothing than to hold her and whisper to her soothingly.

With a heart filled by grief and an unwavering rage in her veins, she stepped through the portal to safety.


End file.
